Book: What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman
This is the followup book to Richard Feynman’s anecdotally autobiographical “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” and it came out in 1988. I last read it in high school (probably around 1993) but I received a copy of it this past Christmas, so I decided to revisit the book. I am quite glad that I did, as my perspective on life has changed so much in the years since then that I have a much greater appreciation for it now. I vaguely remember having been disappointed in it at the time, expecting a continuation of the sidesplitting escapades that make up his first book. I can now see why I felt that way before; “What Do You Care” is really only about two specific aspects of Feynman’s life: his romance with his first wife Arlene and his experience with the commission investigating the Challenger disaster. Neither of these were particularly funny topics (Arlene died very soon after they were married) and the deeper issues that Feynman is talking about went completely over my head.
Reading it now, I think I finally understand what Feynman was really trying to convey. He wasn’t trying to mimic the feel of “Surely You’re Joking” but this format and style was simply his way of communicating. His topics are quite serious and he intends them to be considered as such. When I read the book in high school, I had no idea what it would be like to love someone the way that he loved Arlene. Certainly, I had had girlfriends and such, but the way he worships her and the pain he expresses at her untimely death are things that are difficult to appreciate unless you have felt the same way about someone. So reading it now, having met and married my own Arlene-equivalent, his loving descriptions of her mean much more to me. I cannot begin to fathom what it must’ve been like to deal with her death. Even more compelling is the realization that Feynman faced the loss of the love of his life, while under the tremendous pressure of the Manhattan Project.
The second half of the book, as I have mentioned, deals with the investigation into the loss of the shuttle Challenger in 1986, in which Feynman played a significant role. Again, at the time that I first read it, I could not have understood the sociological issues that Feynman was trying to address. Specifically, he talks a lot about the conceptual gap between the engineers and the managers at NASA and the political pressures to get the Shuttle up. Of course, as a kid, I thought the shuttle was just great and NASA could do no wrong. I see now the validity of some of his criticisms of the program as a whole, and now having worked at NASA I can appreciate the bizarre nature of the organization. Also, at the time that I read it before, I had no idea what it really meant for something to be well-engineered and I certainly had no conception of the amount of politics involved in such a large enterprise. Now as I read it, I’m a real engineer who has worked in large organizations and his words ring painfully true.
So, should you read it? Well, let me say first that if you have not read Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, you need to go buy it right now and read it. In fact, I think I am going to read it again in the next couple of weeks, just for good measure. I feel that this book contributed massively to my perspective on life. You will not regret reading it. You can finish all of Feynman’s books in like ten minutes, so it’s not a big commitment or anything. I’ve mentioned the main downside to this book already – that it is not terribly lighthearted. Also, I read The Pleasure of Finding Things Out a while back and I think there is a fair amount of overlap between the two.